The present invention relates generally to transport carts, and more particularly to a novel cart for transporting dollies and the like for off-loading and on-loading of the dollies into and from a compartment such as a cooking compartment in an oven.
It is a common practice in commercial processing of food products which require baking or the like, to prepare the food products for baking at a food preparation station remote from the cooking ovens. Depending upon the type and size of food products being prepared, the food products are generally placed on trays which are then inserted into an oven baking compartment for baking. After baking, the trays of food products may be transferred to another processing station or, for example, placed in a refrigerator compartment preparatory to further processing. To improve efficiency, a plurality of trays containing food products prepared at the remote food preparation station are frequently supported on a dolly which may be inserted into an oven cooking compartment with trays loaded thereon for baking the food products. Because of the weight of a dolly when loaded with a plurality of food trays, the dolly may be supported on a transport cart for transporting the dolly to an oven or refrigerator or the like where the dolly and associated trays are off-loaded from the cart into the oven or refrigerator compartment, and subsequently loaded back onto the cart for transport to another food processing station. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,883,253, 3,261,484, 3,261,650 and 3,869,052.
Commercial ovens frequently are made as vertical double ovens or may be supported in vertically stacked relation, with each oven having a door hinged about a vertical axis to enable access to the corresponding baking or cooking compartment. Commercial refrigerators may also be made with upper and lower refrigerator compartments having corresponding hinged access doors. A significant problem with known transport carts, and particularly carts adapted to support a plurality of tray-carrying dollies for transport to and from double stacked ovens or refrigerators having upper and lower hinged access doors, is that the carts require both of the upper and lower doors to be open even though access to only one of the compartments is desired. Further, the known transport carts of the type described do not operate effectively with ovens or the like where a space exists between the cart and the entry edge of the oven compartment when the cart is positioned for off-loading or on-loading dollies into and from the oven compartment. The present invention addresses these problems by providing a novel transport cart for transporting one or more tray-carrying dollies, and which readily enables off-loading of a dolly across a space into an oven or refrigerator compartment or the like when the cart is in latched confronting relation therewith.